Slashdot Mirror
WrkRiot Collapses Amongst Allegations of Fraud (qz.com)
HockeyPuck quotes a report from New York Times: This week, WrkRiot, began unraveling in a highly public fashion (Warning: may be paywalled). Its former head of marketing revealed that the start-up had been mired in internal chaos and had sometimes paid employees in cashier's checks before delaying payment... Penny Kim, the former marketing director at WrkRiot, wrote about her experience at the company -- a story that consists of alleged deceptions, including forged wire transfer receipts, late paychecks, and lies from executives. Her entire story can be found in a Medium post titled "I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup." Quartz reports: "Here's the story Kim lays out in her Medium post: In May 2016, after three interviews, she says she accepted the role of marketing director at 1for.one, one of WrkRiot's earlier incarnations. From the beginning, things didn't seem quite right, she says. The CEO, Isaac Choi, hired one of her direct reports without consulting her. A promised $4 million marketing budget never materialized. At investor meetings, the co-founders 'talked about themselves, their connections, and their qualifications for 30 minutes' rather than the product, which they touted as the next 'Credit Karma of LinkedIn.' The software engineering team was largely made up of young Chinese employees relying on visas sponsored by the company to remain in the U.S., Kim says. After repeated inquiring about salaries, Kim alleges, Choi sent forged Wells Fargo wire transfer receipts to 17 employees, and told them that if the money wasn't in their accounts that it was their responsibility to follow up with their banks. Kim ended up filing wage claims with the state of California as the paychecks stopped coming. Kim claims Choi fired her without cause and owes her back wages, a promised $10,000 relocation bonus, and three months of severance worth $50,000, as negotiated in her contract. A series of former employees, advisors, and even the company's former CTO have since denounced WrkRiot and its leadership, in particular Choi."
Why do people stay at a company if it has missed a payday? The day my employer misses a payday, I go home and don't come back until they come up with a paycheck (if at all, since while I'm home I look for another job immediately). Do people stay out of loyalty or naiveté or what?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Jesus. Getting pretty sick of this shit. Tell us what WrkRiot is. What is it? Why should I care?
You fucking idiots.
The payday though is most often disappointing. Unless you've got a relatively simple product that's up and out to the public in a year and the bankers are excited and want to push you to IPO, there's generally a dilution of equity over time. So five or ten years at a startup and your payday is basically the size of a large bonus or a year's salary (which is great but it's not the quick retirement some people think they're going to have). If you take time to build a business instead of hoping for a quicky buy from Google then that time means equity dilutes. Bankers are getting smarter, they are much more likely now to want to see actual recurring revenue before the agree to help with the IPO, so it takes time and you need a real plan.
There's no easy way to make sure those options don't get taken away. Even co-founders can find themselves cut out of the picture with just one vote on the board, so what chance does someone who actually was low class enough to actually have to interview for the job expect?
I'd agree - the startups I've worked for weren't necessarily going for a buy-out, although that'd have kept the VCs happy. Along the way though, we got to play with some cool tech, got some (potential) customer interaction experience, occasionally flew a few places, got some 'everything's broken, you're the only one here, so make it work' type experience and drank a boatload of beer at various places when the bosses got their credit cards out. Of course, when the company went down the pan, we all got left with nothing, but it wasn't a surprise so we all had a 'plan b' lined up.
I wouldn't go for that now as I like the 9-5 so I can be at the right places at the right times for my kids. But back when I was (mostly) single, it was great fun, and rewarded me in a lot more ways than a regular salary.
Just as a side note, one startup I was at really did try to go for quality. We still had to move too fast quite a bit towards the end, but the foundations were pretty solid. All that means nothing now, because the product is long lost in some vault somewhere and provides no benefit to the customers we (nearly) had, or indeed the world as a whole. The question is, was all that quality worth it?